Mistress Pat

  “Oh!” Pat began to laugh and cry at once. They got their arms around each other. Everything was all right…beautifully all right again.

  It was a wonderful evening. Every one enjoyed Judy’s superlative supper, with Rae feeding the cats tid-bits and Tillytuck and Judy outdoing themselves telling stories. Again and again Rae’s eyes met Pat’s over the table in the old camaraderie. Even King William looked as if sometime he might really get across the Boyne. But the best of all came at bedtime when they settled down for the old delight of talking things over with Bold-and-Bad tensing and flexing his claws on Pat’s bed and Popka blinking goldenly on Rae’s.

  “Isn’t it jolly to be good sisters again?” exclaimed Rae. “I feel like that verse in the Bible where all the morning stars sang together. It’s just been horrid…horrid. How could I have been such a little fool? I just wallowed in self-pity all the fall and then it seemed as if that outburst had to come. And all over that…that creature! I’m so ashamed of ever dreaming I cared for him. I can’t understand how I could have been so…so fantastic. And yet I really did have a terrible case. Of course I knew perfectly well in my heart it could never come to anything. At the very worst of my infatuation…when I was trying to pretend to everyone I didn’t care a speck…I knew no Silver Bush girl could ever marry a go-preacher. But that didn’t prevent me from being crazy about him. It seemed so romantic…a hopeless love, you know. Two fond souls forever sundered by family pride and all that, you know. I just reveled in it…I can see that now. The way he used to look at me across that barn! And once, when he read his text…‘Behold thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair. Thou hast dove’s eyes’…he looked right at me and I nearly died of rapture. He really was in love with me then. You never saw the poem he wrote me, Pat. He was jealous of everything, it seemed…of ‘the wind that whispered in my ear’…of ‘the sunshine that played on my hair’…of ‘the moonbeam that lay on my pillow.’ The lines didn’t scan very well and the rhymes limped but I thought it was a masterpiece. Can you wonder I was furious when you just stepped in and lifted him under my very nose? By the way, he’s married, did you know, Pat?”

  “Yes. I saw it in the paper.”

  “Oh, he sent me an announcement,” giggled Rae. “You should have seen it. With scrolls of forget-me-nots around the border! If I hadn’t been cured before that would have cured me. Pat, why is it written in the stars that girls have to make fools of themselves.”

  “We were both geese,” said Pat.

  “Let’s blame it all on the moon,” said Rae.

  They felt very near to each other. And then Judy came in with cups of delicious hot cocoa for them and a “liddle bite” of Bishop’s bread and a handful of raisins as if they were children again.

  “Just think,” said Pat, “to other people this day has been only Wednesday. To me it’s the day you came home…home to me…back into my life. It may be March still by the calendar but it’s April in my heart…April full of spring song.”

  “Here’s to my having more sense in all the years to come,” said Rae, waving her cup of cocoa.

  “To our having more sense,” corrected Pat.

  “It’s lovely to be home again,” sighed Rae. “I had a splendid time at Guelph…and I really did learn lots…much more than just nature study. The social side was all right, too. There were some nice boys. We had a gorgeous trip to Niagara. But I am half inclined to agree with you that there is no place like Silver Bush. It must do something to people who live in it. Those darling cats! I really haven’t seen a decent cat since I left the Island, Pat…no cat who looked as if he really enjoyed being a cat, you know. I wish we could do some crazy thing to celebrate. Sleep out in the moonlight or something like that. But it’s too Marchy. So we must just have a good pi-jaw. Tell me everything that has happened since I went away. Your letters were so…so charitable. There was no kick in them. Let me tell you once for all, Pat, that a person who always speaks well of every one is a most uninteresting correspondent. I’m sure you must be boiling over with gossip. Have there been any nice juicy scandals? Who has been born…married…engaged? Not you, I hope. Pat, don’t go and get married to David. He’s far too old for you, darling…he really is.”

  “Don’t be silly, sweetheart. I just want David as a friend.”

  “The darlints,” said Judy happily, as she went downstairs. “I was knowing the good ould Gardiner sinse wud come out on top.”

  It was wonderful to be too happy to sleep. The very sky through the window looked glad. And when Pat wakened a verse she had heard David read a few days before…a verse which had hurt her at the time but now seemed like a friend…came to her mind.

  “Whoever wakens on a day,

  Happy to know and be.

  To enjoy the air, to love his kind.

  To labor and be free,

  Already his enraptured soul

  Lives in Eternity.”

  She repeated the lines to herself as she stood by her window. Rae slipped out of bed and joined her. Judy was crossing the yard, carrying something for the comfort of her hens.

  “Pat,” said Rae a bit soberly, “does it ever strike you that Judy is growing old?”

  “Don’t!” Pat winced. “I don’t want to think of anything to spoil this happy morning.”

  But she did know that Judy was growing old, shut her eyes to it as she might. And hadn’t Judy said to her rather solemnly one day,

  “Patsy darlint, there do be a nightdress wid a croshay yoke all riddy in the top right hand till av me blue chist if I iver tuk ill suddent-like.”

  “Judy…don’t you feel well?” Pat had cried in alarm.

  “Oh, oh, niver be worrying, darlint. I’m fit as a fiddle. Only I did be rading in the dead list av the paper this morning that ould Maggie Patterson had died in Charlottetown. We were cronies whin I did be coming to the Island at first and she do be only a year older than mesilf. So I just thought I’d mintion the nightdress to ye. The ould lady in Castle McDermott had one av lace and sating she always put on whin she had the doctor.”

  “I’m so glad you and Rae are as you used to be, Pat,” said mother when Pat took her breakfast into her. Pat looked at mother.

  “I didn’t think you knew we weren’t,” she said slowly.

  Mother smiled.

  “You can’t hide such things from mothers, darling. We always know. And now I think a little wise forgetfulness is indicated.”

  Pat stooped and kissed her.

  “My precious dear, wasn’t it lucky father fell in love with you,” she breathed.

  Rae was in kinks in the hall when Pat went out.

  “Oh, Pat, Pat, life is worth living. I’ve just seen Judy making Tillytuck take a dose of castor oil. You’ll never know what you’ve missed.”

  Yes, life was worth living again. And now Pat felt that she could throw herself into housecleaning plans and spring renovating with a heart at leisure from itself. The days that had seemed so endless wouldn’t be half long enough now for all she wanted to crowd into them.

  CHAPTER 30

  David and Suzanne went to England for a trip that spring and the Long House was closed for the summer. Pat missed them terribly but Judy and Rae were consolable.

  “That Suzanne has been trying iver since she come to make a match betwane her brother and Patsy,” Judy told Cuddles. “I’ve been fearing lately she’d manage it. And him as’ll soon be using hair tonics! Patsy hasn’t inny other beau after her just now. The min do be getting discouraged. Somehow the word do be going round she thinks nobody good enough for her.”

  “And there really isn’t a man in the Glens she couldn’t have by just crooking her finger,” said Rae thoughtfully. “I think it’s just that way she has of saying ‘I know’ sympathetically. And she doesn’t mean a thing by it.”

  “Do ye be thinking, Cuddles, that there is inny chance av Jingle coming hom
e this summer now?”

  Rae shook her head.

  “I’m afraid not, Judy. He’s got a big contract for building a mountain inn in B.C.…a splendid chance for a young architect. Besides…I think he has grown away from us now. He and Pat will never be anything but good friends. You can’t make him jealous…I know for I’ve tried…so I’m sure he doesn’t care for her except just as she cares for him. Do you know, Judy, I think it would be better if the uncles and aunts…and perhaps all of us…would stop teasing Pat about beaus or their absence. She thinks the whole clan is bent on marrying her off…and it rouses the Gardiner obstinacy. There’s a streak of it in us all. If you all hadn’t been so contemptuous of poor Larry Wheeler I don’t believe I’d ever have given him a second thought.”

  “Girls do be like that, I’m knowing. But I’d like to see both you and Patsy snug and safe, wid someone to care for ye, afore I die, Cuddles darlint.”

  Rae laughed.

  “Judy, I’m only seventeen. Hardly on the shelf yet. And don’t you talk of dying…you’ll live to see our grandchildren.”

  Judy shook her head.

  “I can’t be polishing off a day’s work like I used to, Cuddles dear. Oh, oh, we all have to grow old and ye haven’t larned yet how quick time do be passing.”

  “As for Pat,” resumed Rae, “I think perhaps she’ll never marry. She loves Silver Bush too much to leave it for any man. The best chance David has is that the Long House is so near Silver Bush that she could still keep an eye on it. Do you know that Norma is to be married this summer?”

  “I’ve been hearing it. Mrs. Brian will be rale aisy in her mind now wid both of her girls well settled. Norma’ll niver have to lift a hand. Not that I do be thinking her beau is inny great shakes av a man wid all his money though he comes of a rale aristocratic family. His mother now…she was av the Summerside MacMillans and niver did she be letting her husband forget it. She kipt up all the MacMillan traditions…niver wore the same pair av silk stockings twice and her maid had to be saying, ‘Dinner is served, madam,’ just like that, afore she cud ate a bite, wid service plates and all the flat silver matching. And in sason and out av sason she did be reminding her husband she was a MacMillan along wid iverybody av inny importance on the Island. It was lucky he had a bit av humor in him or it might have been after being a trifle monotonous. Will I iver be forgetting the story I heard him tell on the madam one cillebration at the Bay Shore? It was whin his b’ys Jim and Davy, were two liddle chaps and Jim did be coming home from church one day rale earnest and sez he to Davy, ‘The minister did be talking av Jesus all the time but he didn’t be saying who Jesus was.’ ‘Why, Jesus MacMillan av coorse,’ sez Norma’s beau, in just the tone av his mother. Mr. MacMillan did be roaring at it, but yer Aunt Honor thought it was tarrible irriverint. Innyway, a Gardiner is as good as a MacMillan inny day. And now I must be making a few cookies. Liddle Mary will be coming over for a wake. She do be so like Patsy whin she was small. Sometimes I’m wondering if the clock has turned back. She do be always saying good-night to the wind like Patsy did…and the quistions av her! ‘Have I got to be good, Judy? Can’t I be a liddle bad sometimes whin I’m alone wid you?’ And, ‘What’s the use av washing me face after dark, Judy?’ Sure and it’s a bit av sunshine whin she comes an I’m thinking the very smallest flower in the garden do be glad, niver to mintion the cats.”

  Pat was really far more interested in Rae’s matrimonial prospects than her own. For Rae seemed to be “swithering,” as Judy put it, between two very nice young men. Bruce Madison of South Glen and Peter Alward of Charlottetown were both camping on the doorstep, and were frightfully and romantically jealous of each other, turning, so it was said, quite pale when they met. Life, as Tillytuck said, was dramatic because of it.

  Pat had nothing against either of them…except that they meant change…and sometimes it was thought that Rae favored one and then the other. She discussed them as flippantly as usual with Pat and Judy but both Pat and Judy were agreed that it was highly probable she would eventually decide on one of them. Pat hated the thought, of course. But if Rae had to marry someday…of course it wouldn’t be for years yet…it must be somebody living near. Pat inclined to like Peter best but Judy favored Bruce.

  “We would make an awfully good-looking couple,” agreed Rae. “I really like Bruce best in summer but I have a rankling suspicion that Peter would be the best for winter. And he always makes me feel beautiful…that’s a knack some men never have, you may have noticed. But then…his nose! Have you noticed his nose, Pat? It’s not so bad now but in a few years it will be very bony and aristocratic. I can’t exactly see myself eating breakfast every morning of my life with it opposite me. And it’s terrible to think that my daughters might inherit it. It wouldn’t matter so much about the boys…a boy can get away with any kind of a nose because few girls are as sensitive to noses as I am. But the poor girls!”

  Judy was horrified but she had no great liking for Peter’s nose herself. So Silver Bush had its own fun out of the haunting suitors and the Golden Age seemed to have returned and nobody took anything very seriously until Pat went to a dance at the Bay Shore Hotel and Donald Holmes, as Rae announced at the breakfast table next morning, fell for her with a crash that could be heard for miles. What was more, Pat blushed, actually blushed, when Rae said this. Everybody drew the same conclusion from that blush. Pat had met her fate.

  At once everybody in the Gardiner clan sat up and took notice. For the rest of the summer Donald Holmes was a constant visitor at Silver Bush. Rae and her two jealous suitors no longer held the center of the stage. Everybody approved. The Holmes family had the proper social and political traditions, and Donald himself was the junior partner in a prosperous firm of chartered accountants.

  “Oh, oh, that do be something like now,” Judy told Tillytuck delightedly. “There’s brading there. And he’ll wear well. Patsy was in the right be waiting.”

  “Methinks I smell the fragrance of orange blossoms, symbolically speaking,” Tillytuck remarked to Uncle Tom.

  “Well, it’s about time,” said Uncle Tom, who was not given to symbols.

  “It’s really better luck than she deserves after all her flirtations,” said Aunt Edith rather sourly.

  Pat herself believed she was in love…really in love. There were weeks of pretty speeches and prettier silences and enchanted moons and stars and kittens…though in her secret soul she suspected him of not caring overmuch about cats. But at least he pretended to like the kittens. One couldn’t have everything. He was well-born, well-bred, good-looking, and charming, and for the first time since the days of Lester Conroy Pat felt thrills and queer sensations generally.

  “I thought I’d left all that behind with seventeen,” she told Rae, “but it really seems to have come back.”

  Rae, who was expecting “one of the men she’s engaged to…” à la May Binnie…carefully perfumed her throat.

  “A plain answer to a plain question, Pat. Do you mean to marry him?”

  “I’m not Betty Baxter,” said Pat with a twinkle.

  “Don’t be exasperating. Everyone knows he means to ask you. Candidly, Pat, I’d like him very much for a brother-in-law.”

  Pat looked sober. In imagination she saw the paragraph in the Charlottetown papers announcing her engagement.

  “I blush when I hear his step at the door,” she said meditatively.

  “I’ve noticed that myself,” grinned Rae.

  “And I suffer agonies of jealousy if he says a word of admiration for any other girl. On the whole…I haven’t quite made up my mind…not quite…but I think, Rae, when he says, ‘Will you please?’ I’ll say, ‘Yes, thank you.’”

  Rae got up and hugged Pat chokily.

  “I’m glad…I’m glad. And yet I’m on the point of howling.”

  “Confidence for confidence, Rae. Which, if either, of your young men do you intend to ma
rry?”

  Rae pulled an ear of Squedunk, who was sitting on his haunches on her bed, gazing at the girls with his usual limpid, round-eyed look. Gentleman Tom looked as if all the wisdom of the ages was his, Bold-and-Bad looked as if life was one amusing adventure, but Squedunk always looked as if he could be a kitten forever if he wanted to.

  “Pat, I wish I knew. I’ve been horribly flippant about it but that was just to cover up. I really don’t know. I do like them both so much…Pat, is it ever possible to be in love with two men? It isn’t in books, I know…but in life? Because I do love them both. They’re both darlings. But, Pat, honestly, the minute I decide I like Bruce best I find I have a mind to Peter. And vice versa. That’s all I can say yet. Well, Norma’s wedding comes off next week. Judy is furious because they are going to rehearse the whole ceremony in the church the night before. ‘Nixt thing they’ll be rehearsing the funerals,’ she says. Judy will be simply mad with delight if you marry Donald. And yet she’ll die of sorrow when you go. When you go…that turns me cold. Oh, Pat, wouldn’t life be nice and simple if people never fell in love? I wish I could make up my mind between Bruce and Peter. But I just can’t. If I could only marry them both.”

  The shrieks of an anguished car resounded from the yard and Rae ran down to welcome Bruce…or it may have been Peter.

  The next afternoon Pat, as she expressed it, “put off Martha and put on Mary,” and hied herself to her Secret Field, although there was apply jelly to make and cucumbers to pickle. She went through the mysterious emerald light of the maple woods, where it seemed as if there must have been silence for a hundred years, and sat down on an old log covered with a mat of green moss in the corner of her field. It had changed so little in all the years. It was still her own and it still held secret understanding with her. But today something came between her soul and it. In spite of everything something touched her with unrest…the certainty of coming change, perhaps.